Enterprise Imaging Blog

HIMSS16 begins next week. With a vision to better health through information technology, HIMSS promises to deliver a different conference from previous years’ shows. For starters, a 40 degree spike in weather from last year’s conference in Chicago should put a smile on the faces of those traveling from colder climates. Furthermore, it’s not an everyday occurrence for a (not one, but two-time) Super Bowl winner, Peyton Manning to deliver a healthcare IT conference keynote speech. Most importantly, HIMSS16 will bring together healthcare leaders from across the world with the same end goal: optimizing health engagements and patient care outcomes through information technology. Merge is excited to play a role in the HIMSS mission of developing innovative technology that will ultimately improve the speed and accuracy of healthcare delivery.

Deriving Clinical Insights from Medical Data*
IBM Watson Health is in the process of building cognitive solutions to surface key clinical insights from structured and unstructured medical data. Watson Health is aggregating key medical data to arm medical care teams across varied specialties (including radiology, oncology, cardiology, and department heads) with knowledge that may help them make better care decisions.

We welcome the opportunity to acquaint you with multiple demonstrations of work in progress that unite IBM Research, IBM Watson Health, and Merge Healthcare technologies. Visit the Merge booth (#2116) to learn more about applications for cardiology and radiology. Speak to a Subject Matter Expert at the IBM booth (#5932) to learn more about oncology.

2016 Planned Solutions

Code Name: Medius. Cognitive services that will help clinicians understand and navigate patient medical records more efficiently, completely and within context of their role and workflow. Watson Health is using these services in its Code Name: Qibo solution, arming specialists in radiology, cardiology, oncology and department administrators with more relevant knowledge that may help them make better care decisions.

Code Name: Qibo. Provides radiologists, cardiologists, and clinicians with contextually-linked access to a concisely presented patient record summary. The solution can be launched from Merge Cardio™, iConnect® Access and Merge PACS™ as well as EMRs.

Code Name: Iaso. Clinical and Operational audit offering allowing a department or enterprise to improve performance. The first release of Code Name: Iaso will focus on identifying patients at risk for a particular disease which will be risk of aortic heart disease. Future releases are planned to cover additional diseases such as other cardiac diseases, breast and lung cancer, and others.

Future Planned Solutions

Code Name: Avicenna. Automatically analyzes images to change the way physicians read imaging exams in terms of increased accuracy and throughput. Physicians using this platform will transform the way images are read and used to diagnose and treat patients.

Code Name: Blackwell. A skin lesion image analysis system designed to augment diagnostics for melanoma and seamlessly integrate with the clinical workflow. Being designed with a mobile-device front-end with dermoscopic attachment to allow the clinician to capture high-quality images of skin lesions that are transmitted to an IBM Watson Cloud-based service to analyze them in real-time.

*DISCLAIMER: The capabilities demonstrated here are for DEMONSTRATION PURPOSES ONLY. The capabilities are in the research and development phase and are not available for any use, commercial or non-commercial, in the United States. Any statements and claims related to the capabilities are aspirational only. The case studies in these demonstrations are hypothetical case studies using fictitious medical information and do not represent actual medical cases. Although the results contained in these demonstrations were obtained in a controlled environment and represent a vision of possible future technology, they have not yet been evaluated for safety and efficacy, including by any applicable regulatory agency such as the FDA.

Providing demonstrations of our full solutions suite
Merge will, of course, also showcase our four Best in KLAS solutions, including iConnect® Enterprise Archive (Merge’s VNA) that helps organizations easily collect, manage, archive, and present growing volumes and variances of patient images – DICOM or non-DICOM – both from inside and beyond the walls of your healthcare enterprise. Additionally, Merge will have demonstrations of our core solutions designed to help you achieve your interoperability goals.

Find Merge at the HIMSS Interoperability Showcase™
Don’t miss Merge at the Interoperability Showcase, which will feature innovative new technologies and interactive presentations on health information exchange, IHE innovations, and telehealth resources. Jon Devries, VP of Solutions Management will present, How to Manage Non-DICOM Images within an Enterprise Imaging Solution, focused on multiple sites and specialties working toward centralized enterprise data management strategies, with patient-centric care across the enterprise is the ultimate goal.

See you in Las Vegas!

Merge is looking forward to another exciting HIMSS conference, and we hope to see you at the Merge Booth #2116. Want to learn more about what we are showcasing at HIMSS16? Visit our HIMSS16 web page.

Our blog covers topics related to medical images, including how to safely and securely archive, manage and share these important pieces of medical information. We also discuss issues related to imaging, such as industry trends, government regulation, reimbursement changes and much more.